Being Norwegian, I am conditioned by Nordic Christmas-traditions. Of course, you have the Swedish vendor of furniture who sells mulled wine and ginger-cookies who is promoting the Nordic Christmas, but the last few years, we have been seeing some of the big “Grands Magasins” in Paris decorated with Norwegian Christmas ornamental Balls from Arne and Carlos. Well, everyone think they are Swedish because there is a general confusion about the frontiers “up north”, at least here in France, but I can confirm that the Christmas Balls are a Norwegian tradition, renewed and well promoted by the book who came out some years ago in Norway, and later translated into several languages. (But to be righteous, Carlos is actually from Sweden!)

This is actually a funny story, because Arne and Carlos were working on a knitted collection for the Japanese fashion house Comme des Garçons, and in their prospect, they included some Christmas ornamental balls. The owner, Rei Kawakubo, liked them so much that she ordered them for decoration of all her shops.

Why do I talk about this? Because the Norwegian Church in Paris is organizing their annual Christmas Market this weekend, and I have made some knitting-kit’s “Knit Christmas ornamental balls” (in Norwegian and French) which are sold on the Market to support their work.

The kit: the pattern in Norwegian and French, DPN’s size 3mm, yarn Holst Garn Supersoft in red and off-white, stuffing. The pattern is based on a diagram which I found on the Norwegian official television, nrk.no. But the explanation is my own, and does not copy the one in the book (neither the Norwegian nor the French one). I had fun figuring this out, and I hope I did not forget anything. I got the materials from my LYS Le Comptoir. The owner, Barbara, helped us greatly with keeping the cost low. A big thanks’ to her!

For those of you who cannot come, but would like to knit Christmas ornamental balls, AND who read French or Norwegian (!), you can download the pattern here. And run to Le Comptoir to buy Holst Garn Supersoft! She is also selling the book with the 55 different designs and a whole different way of explaining the how-to than I did, which proves that language highly condition the way you are apprehending the world. But that is a different debate.